Dan Patrick Offers Faith-Based Plan To Ease Foster Care Crisis

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick unveiled Monday an initiative for Texas faith-based communities to identify foster and adoptive families for children, the latest in attempts from state leaders to ease a backlog of thousands of endangered kids searching for homes.

"I'm asking faith-based leaders across Texas to reach out to their congregations and communities to open their hearts and homes to the foster children of Texas," Patrick said in a statement.

Patrick's plan comes at a time when the state's Child Protective Services system has been in the spotlight. The Department of Family and Protective Services released numbers earlier this month showing nearly a thousand at-risk children under CPS care were not checked on once over the course of six months. That report also found that caseworkers did not see 1,800 children within 24-hours of hearing reports of alleged abuse or mistreatment.

"Their assistance in recruiting amazing families is mission critical, and we need their support within the child welfare community now more than ever," state leaders wrote in the letter.

Patrick's initiative is being launched in conjunction with National Adoption Month in November. On Nov. 2, he's hosting faith leaders at the Texas Capitol to discuss the role of faith-based communities in recruiting and retaining future foster and adoptive families.

Patrick's plan also includes a website that will "guide potential foster and adoptive parents to information about how they can help," he said in his statement.

"Several elected state officials have opened their homes to children in need of loving families and are working with me to inspire a statewide movement to answer this calling," Patrick said. "I hope you and your family will consider doing the same."

Kate Murphy, senior policy associate for child protection for Texans Care for Children, said in an emailed statement that Patrick's initiative could help recruit foster parents who are "nurturing, well-trained and focused on helping kids heal in foster care." Yet the state will need to do more to fully address the state's foster care crisis.

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Gov. Greg Abbott and other state leaders ordered the Department of Family and Protective Services Wednesday to ramp up efforts to protect endangered foster children and curb the backlog of ones waiting for homes.

Texas began a strategic plan to reform the foster care system in 2014, but the overhaul is still in the early stages of rollout. The plan has been moving forward without much fanfare, at a time when Child Protective Services is taking a lot of heat for some high-profile tragedies.

The biggest change is a shift away from investigation efforts – the CPS worker who comes knocking on the door asking questions – to a public heath approach aimed at strengthening families and reducing the number of serious injuries and fatalities.

The plan puts a heavy emphasis on the staggering cost of child abuse and the need to be smarter about resources – to use big data as never before.

Doctors at Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth are used to treating cases of abuse. But what they’d really like to do is prevent it. So they’re experimenting with “big data” technology that could help predict neighborhoods where kids are most likely to be abused.